In 48 hours, this thing has killed off more than 5,200 attempts to track my browsing. I look at websites as a big part of my job, so a big number didn’t come as a surprise. But that big? I had no idea.

But that’s nothing compared to how much easier life is for my CPU. I keep Apple’s Activity Monitor up and running all the time, just because I’m a bit of a geek like that. Under a typical browser workload — which for me is a lot of open windows and tabs — my browser web content could be eating up anywhere from an eighth to a quarter of my CPU cycles. That’s been cut down by about 80%.

In other words, web trackers might be quadrupling the processor load of your web browser, slowing down your whole system.

As I said the other day, just go and download it right now.

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20 Comments, 16 Threads

1.
D. F. Linton

Steve,
Always have loved your blog, but posting on this tool fully discharges your “do good” quota for all of 2012!

I can completely affirm your findings. I don’t have the exact metrics, but the simple fact that I’ve not had to kill Extensions and restart Safari for the last couple of days speaks volumes. I used to experience massive slowdowns (sometimes seeing my entire system brought to its knees). Now? Movin’ right along.

I wonder if Apple is aware of how badly Safari chokes on tracking scripts. This is really amazing, to be honest. I’ve wondered if there were some javascript issues that were behind my suffering. But this is really ridiculous.

My solution (I run Linux) is to surf the Web with Links2, a text-based browser which also displays still pictures.
Everything loads in a flash, there are no blinky-blinky ads, and all the extraneous trash which slows down a full-featured browser simply does not stick! Obviously, amongst that “trash” must be numbered Tracking Scripts…
You *do* have to be willing to forgo all those Modern Conveniences…!

Steve, According to my “Do Not Track” icon your website has tried to place 4 tracking cookies from social media, 1 tracking cookie from business and 3 tracking cookies from companies. All have been blocked. So, Who attaches these cookies ????